Am 30.03.2011 12:15, schrieb Partha Chowdhury:
Well I picked this configuration from Red Hat training books, except for port 54215 which I open for bit torrent.
What do you suggest about the ideal iptables configuration for basic desktop user -
This comes with our iptables package: $ cat /etc/iptables/simple_firewall.rules *filter :INPUT DROP [0:0] :FORWARD DROP [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset -A INPUT -p udp -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-port-unreachable -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-proto-unreachable COMMIT I use this as a basis for every packet filter I create manually (but then, I originally wrote this file). Just add your open ports as you did before. This has the advantage that 1) ICMP is allowed. ICMP can do essential things such as path MTU discovery. Blocking all ICMP packets might lead to various bizzare connection failures (in the past, many of these failures where because large corporate networks had stupid admins that blocked ICMP entirely). 2) You properly block incoming connections. When someone tries to connect to a port that is not allowed, the connection will simply be rejected, the client does not have to wait for a timeout. Most home routers use DROP rules here, which can be very annoying. One example: You want to ssh home, but got the wrong IP (dyndns not updated yet, whatever). Instead of just seeing a message that the connection has been closed, you have to wait between 1 and 2 minutes until you get a timeout. Another one: When you connect to freenode, the server tries to get your ident information. If you drop connections, the server will stall at that point, waiting for a timeout. If you reject properly, it will immediately proceed without having to wait. These might seem like minor annoyances, but on a large scale (hundreds of thousands of machines behaving incorrectly), this might have worse consequences.
allowing proper connection as you said and yet stay secure from malicious port scanners ?
What is a "malicious port scanner" and how can you stay "secure" from it?